Raising Capital

Zack works full-time in the Edmonton innovation community. He is the Director of Growth at Fitset Ninja, an American Ninja Warrior-style Obstacle course gym and he is the Scientist-in-Residence at TEC Edmonton, where he manages a space for scientists to build companies out of their research. He also runs a community event called Startup TNT: Thursday Night Tradition at Polar Park Brewing where members of the YEG innovation community are invited to have fun, make friends, and build lasting relationships over beer. Finally, he is an active investor in YEG startups as a member of Valhalla Angels and organizer of the Startup TNT Investment Summit.

Tara helps enable passionate entrepreneurs by providing debt and equity financing and advisory services to help grow their tech companies as a Senior Account Manager with the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC). She’s focused on connecting Edmonton’s Technology and Innovation companies to resources they need to grow and succeed.

Prior to this she was a Commercial Banker at CIBC where she managed a diverse portfolio of client relationships covering a variety of industries including oil and gas, manufacturing, retail, transportation, and automotive.

Tara provided integrated financial solutions with partners across the bank to address companies business needs throughout every stage of a company’s life cycle, including credit, trade finance, leveraged finance, cash management, foreign exchange, hedging, investments, mergers and acquisitions, and management buyouts.

Shaun Arora graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with Honors and went to work as a cultural anthropologist for consumer packaged goods companies. In 2005, he joined the family electronics manufacturing business, NEO Tech, and worked to scale the business. As a result of his leadership, the business has grown 40X in that time and has over 3400 employees servicing the aerospace, industrial, and medical device industries.

As NEO Tech moves into a middle market growth phase Shaun allocates a larger portion of his time towards early stage companies. As an investor, board member and mentor, he’s often playing devil’s advocate and challenging executive teams towards brilliant and uncomfortable thinking. He has worked with a number of hardware startups in particular from prototype to crowdfunding, manufacturing, and subsequent stages of financing. In 2015, Shaun spun off Make in LA from the contract manufacturing business to improve learnings and outcomes for hardware startups. He remains an advisor and a board member at NEO Tech.

At Make in LA, Shaun focuses on leveraging NEO Tech’s resources to support the startups, leveraging his portfolio for best practices, providing world class programming, and building strategic partnerships for the benefit of the startups.